Call for Papers – Special SessionOpen Educational Resources (OER)

Overview

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials, delivered in any media, that are under public domain or licensed openly, allowing them to be used or adapted by third parties.

OER had been developed for more than 15 years in the educational field, based on the principles of open movement and inspired by free software. International institutions such as UNESCO or the European Union are making a major effort to develop this concept, which involves not only a new type of resource, but a model of personal, institutional and governmental involvement. OER are seen as an opportunity for teacher innovation through their empowerment as co-creators, who are offered the opportunity to reuse and adapt existing resources. From a practical point of view, the concept of OER is being favored by the development of new applications and solutions that promote the user’s adoption: open formats, open source applications, open licenses such as Creative Commons, social networks, repositories, etc.

Main Goal

OER Special Session seeks to bring together OER researchers, activists, teachers and stakeholders, to present theoretical, methodological, technical or empirical research on OER and related issues. We seek, in particular, a look at OER current main challenges.

OER Special Session it is hoped to be able to give visibility to the actions that in these five strategic areas are being developed in different contexts and languages, giving global diffusion, as well as greater international articulation to them. In that sense, it would be opportune that the OER Special Session should also be considered as an activity that continues the discussions of the 2nd World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress.

Topics of Interest

Building the capacity of users to find, re-use, create and share OER:

Building awareness and skills to use OER

Sharing OER

Finding OER

Language and cultural issues:

Gender-sensitive, culturally and linguistically relevant OER

Development and adaptation of culturally-sensitive and linguistically accurate OER